Quotes from Martin Parr

My father was an obsessive bird-watcher. The genes of observation passed down.

When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.

I pride myself in being an aficionado of the British seaside. Throughout my career, I have visited and worked in many of the famous British resorts, from Great Yarmouth to Largs.

You can't shoot in sepia, so converting into black and white and then into brown makes everything feel less real.

Of course, New Brighton is very shabby, very rundown, but people still go there because it's the place where you take kids out on a Sunday.

I get up early and open my emails, write cheques, and answer the phone; whatever needs to be done.

I would drown in objects if I didn't have the ability to photograph them.

I photograph people as I find them. But people have issues about how they look.

I always take photographs when I attend a funeral. Most people there know who I am and expect me to be there with my camera.

Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.

I never think of photographs as being individual. Always as a group.

Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It's whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.

TV-makers usually don't know much about photography.

I do read many of the photography magazines from the U.K. and abroad.

There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they're all in London.

Taking photos is a form of collecting.

I have been photographing people dancing for 20 or 30 years now, and I think I will eventually do a book of dancing photos.

If there is any jarring at all in my photographs, it's because we are so used to ingesting pictures of everywhere looking beautiful.

I am not a huge follower of music and tend to like one CD and play it to death, usually when I am washing up.

If you go to the supermarket and buy a package of food and look at the photo on the front, the food never looks like that inside, does it? That is a fundamental lie we are sold every day.

When a mother takes pictures of her children on the beach, she doesn't take herself for an artist; she does it for love, which is an excellent reason, from my point of view.

The trouble with Hollywood films is that they always have a pleasant ending.

My biggest television weakness is 'Dragons' Den.'

I photograph wealth.